permanent.”
“You mean a gunfight? No, I ain’t goin’ to get into no gunfight with the likes of you,” Logan said. “Besides, like I said, there’s two of you. I figure with the two of you, it might just about make a fistfight come out even.”
“You can keep me out of this one, mister,” Corbett said. “This just between the two of you.” Corbett stood up and walked away, leaving the floor to the two players. Pardeen, in the meantime, stood up and stepped away from the table. He let his arm hang down alongside his pistol and he looked at the cowboy through cold, ruthless eyes.
“Well, what about it, Mr. Logan?” Pardeen said. “You’re the one that asked me to dance.”
Logan shook his head. “No, I told you, this ain’t the kind of fight I’m talkin’ about.”
“I’ll let you draw first,” Pardeen offered.
“I told you, I ain’t drawin’ on you,” Logan said. He doubled up his fists again. “But if you’d like to come over here and take your beatin’ like a man, I’d be glad to oblige you.”
“I said draw,” Pardeen repeated in a cold, flat voice.
The others in the saloon began, quietly but deliberately, to get out of the way of any flying lead.
Logan shook his head slowly. “I told you, I ain’t goin’ to draw on you,” he said. He smiled. “You might’a noticed that I’m not wearin’ a gun.”
“I’ll give you time to get yourself heeled,” Pardeen offered.
“I told you, I ain’t goin’ to get into no gunfight with you.”
“Somebody give Mr. Logan a gun,” Pardeen said coldly. He pulled his lips into a sinister smile. “He seems to have come to this fight unprepared.”
“I don’t want a gun,” Peabody said.
When no one offered Logan their gun, Pardeen pointed to a cowboy who was standing at the far end of the bar. “I see that you are wearing a gun. Give it to him.”
“He don’t want a gun,” the man said. “I ain’t goin’ to do that. If I give him a gun, you’ll kill him.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I don’t want no part of it.”
“You got no choice, friend. You’ll either give him your gun or you had better be ready to use it yourself,” Pardeen said. He turned three quarters of the way toward the armed cowboy. “Which will it be?”
The cowboy paused for just a moment longer, then sighed in defeat. “All right, all right. If you put it that way, I reckon I’ll do whatever you want.” He took his gun out of the holster and laid it on the bar. “Sorry, Logan,” he said. He gave the gun a shove and it slid halfway down the bar, knocking two glasses aside, then stopping just beside Logan’s hand. It rocked back and forth for a moment, making a little sound that, in the now-silent bar, seemed amost deafening.
“Pick it up,” Pardeen said to Logan.
Logan looked at the pistol, but made no effort to pick it up. A line of perspiration beads broke out on his upper lip.
“No, I ain’t goin’ to do it.”
Pardeen drew his pistol and fired. There was a flash of light and a roar of exploding gunpowder. A billowing cloud of acrid, blue smoke rolled from the end of Pardeen’s pistol, then began rising to the ceiling.
For a moment the entire saloon thought Pardeen had killed Logan, but that impression dissolved when they saw that Logan was still standing. He wasn’t unscathed, though, for he was holding his hand to the side of his head with blood spilling through his fingers. Pardeen had shot off a piece of Logan’s earlobe.
“Pick up the gun,” Pardeen ordered.
“No.”
There was a second shot and Peabody’s right earlobe, like his left, turned into a ragged, bloody piece of flesh.
“Mister, you better do somethin’,” Corbett said. “Else ole Quince here is goin’ to carve you up like a Christmas turkey.”
Logan stood there holding his hands over his ears as he stared at Pardeen. Both hands were red with blood.
“Pick it up!”
“No!”
“Are you left-handed or right-handed?” Pardeen asked.
“What?”
“Left or right.”
“Why do you ask that?”
“I figure you are probably right-handed,” Pardeen said. “Am I right?”
“Whether I’m right-handed or left-handed ain’t none of your business,” Logan said.
“You better hope I’m right,” Pardeen said. He pulled his gun and shot a third time. This time his bullet took one of the fingers off Logan’s left hand.
